MBA Internship Recruiting Starts NOW

Long gone are the days when b-school students could arrive relaxed on campus in September, spend the first few months acclimating to students life and thinking about what they wanted to do in the future, and then finally applying for internships in January.

Now, students barely have time to catch their breaths before internship recruiting begins on campus.

• Students get a real winter break, without the pressure of applying for internships.
• Early recruiting means that students and recruiters get more time to determine if they’re right for each other.

CONS:

• Students need to know what they want to do almost immediately after starting school and don’t get to use those first few months of school to explore their options.
• Students run the risk of committing to the wrong internship when they feel pressured to accept a position early on in the game.

Not everyone is jumping the internship gun. Some schools (like Stanford) don’t allow recruiters on campus until six weeks after school begins. And some companies understand that rushing isn’t the best way to get the best candidates and are taking their time as well.

See the BW article for more details.

Whether early MBA internship recruiting is good or bad can clearly be debated, but the reality remains that recruiting has moved earlier. You need to be ready when you arrive on campus. “Ready” means you need to know where you want to end up after your MBA in order to pursue the right internships. Does that statement sound like something you’ve read on this blog before? It is.

Your post-MBA goal is not just some nice sounding verbiage you create out of thin air for application essays. It’s the purpose that should animate, motivate, and propel your entire application process.

When you have that kind of purpose driving your application, you’ll be ready for the internship search whenever it starts.